Dead Man's Club
by LittleBlueNayru
Summary: ONESHOT! Where does the Hero's Shade go when he's bored of waiting for Link? Why, to where all dead things go, of course! Arbiter's Grounds.


Disclaimer: I don't own Zelda.

Well, this idea hit me last night when I was trying to get to sleep. If it's already been written, I'm sorry, I didn't know, I'm not trying to steal. But really, who expects me to slog through 15,000 stories just to see if one idea has been taken? So, I don't know if it's good or not. Have fun.

* * *

Dead Man's Club

When you aren't living and you most certainly can't be counted as dead, your life, or death, or whatever the limbo is, can get pretty tedious.

So thought the Hero's Shade from his white otherworldly outpost, watching the goings-on in the Hyrule of the current incarnation of Link. The Shade had almost nothing to do until the new hero called him with his wolf songs other than work out what he was going to teach the boy next, and how. Which was solved with less than a half-hour's preparation.

At least, what he _thought_ was a half-hour. Because in this stinking white netherworld, time had no meaning. The Hero's Shade found that he missed that concept more than anyone and anything from his Hyrule, way back when.

Finally, he had had enough. Unbidden by Link, he decided to make a trip down to Hyrule. But where to?

The Shade looked all around his white netherworld and looked at each place individually. He couldn't go to the castle, for the obvious reason that someone other than Link might see him. The same was with that house in the mountains. Apparently the yetis there liked to eat wolves, and what a matter that would be when they found their hands passing right through him! The forest, he had seen countless times. And Death Mountain had changed beyond what he had known. Apparently the volcano was dormant, and the Gorons had set up mines in the now-cool crater.

Suddenly, a place he had never seen before caught his eye.

The monument was the color of sandstone, and six tall spires threatened to spear the sky with their height. These spires were adorned with the symbols of the Six Sages and the eagle, the symbol of Hyrule.

The Hero's Shade stared with curiosity at the structure. He had never seen it before, not even when he had traveled to the Desert Colossus, which was now blocked by impassible rock.

The Shade knew where he was going to go.

* * *

The dungeon reeked of death. The _land_ reeked of death, but it wasn't quite as obvious to someone with a less-than-wolf-sensitive nose, as the winds blew it away.

In here, however, the poor Shade had had to revert to his dead warrior form. The place was worse than the Shadow Temple and the Bottom of the Well!

With nothing better to do, the Shade wandered around the dungeon, looking all around him. The place was full of levers and chains, sand and skulls. Skulls that grew bat wings whenever he approached. _Bubbles_, he thought with irritation. Oh, well. He wasn't solid. He couldn't be hurt.

It surprised him, therefore, when two or three Bubbles started flapping around his head.

"Hey! You there! What are you?" they asked, sound issuing from their empty jaws. The Shade's own jaw dropped in surprise, but he quickly recovered. After all, he himself was basically an armored-covered talking skeleton.

"I'm a spirit," he told the Bubbles. "I'm a dead soul waiting to move on to the afterlife."

The Bubbles flapped around excitedly. "So are we!" they cheered.

The Shade tilted his head. "You are?"

"Yup! Come and meet everyone else!"

The Shade, with a shrug, allowed them to lead the way to a room with much more light and much more space. Once inside, the Bubbles flew around the room, screeching eerily and yelling," Everyone! Come out!"

Immediately, the room was filled with flying dirt. Monsters were appearing from every possible place into the room, and even the Shade faltered, gripping the hilt of his sheathed sword reflexively.

However, they all simply crowded around him, chatting quite animatedly for dead things, and the Shade smiled and joined right on in.

* * *

The Hero's Shade found the place to be quite..._liveable_, surprisingly. The Bubbles loved to play hide-and-go seek, the Redead Knights loved to spar (although they could be counted on to use their cheap screams sometimes), and the Stalkins loved to hear stories about the adventures of the Hero's Shade when he was alive. Even the Ghoul Rats and Poes liked his presence, for he was one of the only ones who could see them. Death Sword was even consoled by the fact that the living incarnation of the Shade would be coming to put an end to him soon, and the Shade spent many an hour with Stallord trying to guess what sort of monstrous creature he had been.

The place became the refuge of the Hero's Shade whenever Link was out adventuring and the white netherworld got a tad too boring. The labyrinth beneath the monument was huge, full of surprises, and never boring.

All things must come to an end, however, and the Shade set off for the monument's dungeon the moment he had taught his descendant the last of the Howling Songs. As usual, his new dead friends crowded around and began to socialize, but as the news spread that the Shade would soon be leaving, the mood of the room became deathly sad.

"Do you really need me to have a good time?" the Shade asked.

"It's more fun with you!" the Bubbles said. "The Stalkins and Stalfos never play hide-and-seek!"

"The Stalfos don't tell us war stories!" the Stalkins whined.

"Death Sword and Stallord are gone, and we will have no company!" the rats chattered.

"Don't go!" they all said.

The Hero's Shade would have smiled had he a mouth, so instead he laughed. "You should play with each other and keep each other company. And as for you Ghoul Rats, can you not see that you are now corporeal?"

The rats looked at themselves, the skeletons of live rats, and squeaked with excitement.

"But...before I have to go, let's all throw a huge party!" the Shade said.

"Yeah!" said all the enemies.

Immediately the main Poe room filled with many more multicolored flames, as well as an organ that mysteriously began playing "Thriller" all by itself. All the enemies, from the strongest Redead Knight to the smallest Poison Mite, began to dance.

"Yeah!" the Hero's Shade yelled from the front. "_It's a thriller, thriller night!_"

* * *

Well, that was quite random, I think. Especially the end, because most of my work ends of being humorous and I had no other better way to end this. I'm sorry for the lame ending.

Does the mental image disturb you? The Hero's Shade, doing the Thriller?

Review if you feel like it. Reviewing causes me to think of more random things like this.


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